It was nearer twenty-five minutes before Drake’s body, upside down,
floated gently past one of the reaction buildings. He caught at an
edge, righted himself on the fly, and then let himself drift gently
down beside them. On the ground he turned on his bootsole gravitators
and stood upright and at ease.
He took a deep breath.
“Greetings!” his voice rattled in their helmets, with an obvious
attempt at geniality. “Tinker, you skunk, I heard you talking to our
friend on the radio. Why didn’t you tell me she was a girl?”
“I always have been a girl, Mr. Drake,” said Siria.
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” said Drake. “Well, so long, Tinker.”
Tinker looked at his colleague thoughtfully. “You aren’t by any chance
in a hurry to get rid of me, are you?”
“Of course not, Tinker. Goodbye.”
The girl said, “Thanks for everything, Tinker. You’ve been a real help.
Another hour and we’ll have the new circuits installed, so I guess I
won’t be seeing you again. It really is goodbye.”
Tinker thought out loud, “It’s only been seven hours. Maybe I’ll just
stick around and--”
“No, no,” said Drake hastily. “Don’t take unnecessary risks, Tinker.
Radioactivity’s dangerous stuff.”
“Well,” Tinker looked rather desperately toward the horizon. “I’ll tell
you what,” he said. “Your space ship’s gravity-stabilized, Siria. I’ll
just climb into it for a while. I’ll be safe and insulated against
radiation, and then--”
“Tinker,” said Drake reproachfully, “we’d love to have you stay. But
I started the coffeemaker for you in the spacehouse. You know how
unreasonable that gadget is. If you aren’t there in half an hour it
will spatter coffee all over the kitchen.”
“Damn it, Drake,” Tinker remonstrated angrily. “I ought to wring your
neck.”
The girl was laughing. “Really, Tinker,” she said, “I’ll be perfectly
all right here with Mr. Drake. Go ahead before I start worrying about
you.”
“Will you drop in for a cup of coffee before you go back to Earth?”
“All right,” Siria promised. “Now go ahead!”
Tinker glared at Drake, but no expression was visible through his
partner’s faceplate. It wasn’t like the man to be gallant. From his
long winter-evening reminiscences, extremely primitive lovemaking was
more his style. Still--Siria was pretty well protected by the radiation
field, if nothing else, to say nothing of the lack of atmosphere.
It would take a genius even to get a look at her face under the
circumstances.
And, Tinker admitted to himself, he _was_ undergoing more radiation
exposure than safety considerations could possibly sanction, especially
since he had three months more to go on his tour of duty. Likely enough
Drake was relying on his massive male personality to make an impression
on Siria for some later occasion. “Okay,” Tinker said reluctantly. “But
that’s a promise, Siria. See you later.”
Asteroid B was low on the horizon, but by careful manipulation of the
bootsole gravitators Tinker could spiral after it. He took a little run
to gather speed, cut the gravity and leapt boldly into space.
As he sailed away, spinning in the sedate pace on which he prided
himself, he could see Drake and the girl turning toward the circuit
sheds once more. He caught a few words of explanation from Siria to the
man about the circuits, and then the bulk of Asteroid A came between
him and the two and shadowed the radio waves. He knew that by the time
they were in line-of-sight again, they would be too far from his helmet
radio for their voices to carry.
By carefully timing the amount and direction of gravitator flow Tinker
swung around in a spiral toward the spacehouse on Asteroid B. He made
his corrections early, and as B ascended above the horizon he zeroed
in with error-allowing caution toward the building where he and Drake
lived.
He leaned back against his armor and relaxed in the void.
It was a wonderful feeling to float free from the tug of gravity, to
sail gently upward while heart and lungs and brain relaxed completely.
He stared drowsily at the hard, bright stars....
It was not, however, so wonderful that he could afford to fall asleep,
and risk sailing so far past B that he’d never be able to return. He
shook himself and kept his eyes open, watching the universe spin around
and around while he whirled gently on his own axis.
“That lying skunk!” ranted Tinker. “He just wanted to get me out of the
way!”
He stared in bitter fury at the cold and empty coffeemaker, which had
_not_ been left turned on! He should have known that the last thing in
the universe Drake would ever think of doing was a favor for someone
else.
He started the coffee and then surlily seated himself before the TV
screen. A filmplay was coming through from Deimos Relay, but he was
unable to concentrate on it.
He found himself seeing instead what he imagined to be the face of
Siria Cottrell. He really was getting space-happy, letting himself
become torn up over a girl whose face he had never even seen!
But it was curiously pleasant.
He glanced at his watch. He’d been gone exactly half an hour. Not more
than an hour to wait, at most, before he’d be seeing her again. But he
felt uneasy in an inexplicable way. Not so inexplicable, though, he
realized. It was the thought of Drake alone with the girl that bothered
him. Drake was an unmitigated scoundrel.
Most of the men the Company assigned to lonely outposts like Binary
Y-335 were carefully picked volunteers. But there were exceptions, and
Drake was one of the really bad ones. An ugly record of convictions for
nine crimes. It was amazing that the authorities had accepted Drake’s
petition for voluntary psychiatric treatment.
Of course, there was such a thing as pressure on the parole board,
Tinker reminded himself, and it was quite possible such pressure had
been applied. At any rate, the “voluntary dangerous labor” assignment
after the psychiatry had turned out to be the same “high-bonus” job
which Tinker had so eagerly volunteered for.
Anyway, even if there had been successful psychiatry, it was down the
drain now. Three months on the lonely asteroid with Tinker had opened
big cracks in Drake’s facade of adjustment. He had become more and more
morose, spiteful, and selfish.
It would have been a difficult enough assignment for even a stable
personality. But for Drake it brought to the surface his enormous
instinct for selfishness--the world-hatred of the compulsive and
rejected man.
Tinker found himself at the window-plate, staring at Asteroid A. But
the buildings where Drake and the girl had joined forces were still
beyond his range of vision. A few minutes later, however, they came
into view and Tinker, no longer even pretending to watch the filmplay,
began grimly hanging on to the eyepiece of the big telescope.
He scanned Asteroid A carefully. The streets were occupied--but only
with the headless robots, still stalking around on their cryptic
errands. The building that housed the great electronic brain looked
empty.
But he found them at last.
They seemed to be walking almost arm in arm, in a sort of ungainly
waltz. But, though the distorted perspective made it hard to see the
pattern of that incredible “dance,” Tinker recognized it for what it
was.
Drake was walking toward the girl’s space ship. And Siria, beside him,
was bobbing aimlessly as his arm tugged her along. He was forcibly
dragging her.
Tinker wasted no time in reproaching himself. He struggled into his
space suit and was outside in a matter of seconds. There was a rocket
launcher just outside, designed for quick emergency transportation from
B to A.
He was facing an emergency now. He stepped into the rocketboots,
cut his gravity, and pulled the switch. Almost immediately Asteroid
A swelled to the dimensions of a celestial melon, mottled and
light-rimmed in the void above him. Swiftly it grew larger, filling the
entire viewscreen, becoming a variegated relief map of familiar design.